Andornot Blog

Andornot has recently completed several exciting upgrades to the Heritage Burnaby website. The Archives received funding to digitize and create a web search interface to audio interviews on cassettes or reel to reel tapes from the last fifty years. These interviews give an intimate glimpse into the lives of the Burnaby pioneers, and cover a wide range of subjects. One of the common themes is the struggles that the Municipality and Burnaby families faced during the 1930s when the City went into receivership and unemployment was widespread.

As an interview could be more than an hour long, each was split into 5-10 minute tracks. Behind the scenes Inmagic TextWorks databases were established to capture information on the Master recording with metadata including the interviewee, date interviewed, interviewer and detailed biographical notes. An image file showing either the interviewee or a relevant image such as the location or house discussed in the interview was also added. Each track was then described individually and associated with the master record. Information includes the scope and content of each track, the date range, the subjects discussed and the historical neighbourhood.

The new web interface allows users to search for any word or phrase across the descriptive fields, or by interviewee, subject or neighbourhood. There is also an option to browse a listing of all the interviews.

Just adding a link for a user to click and then download an audio file was not an option. Most users do not want to wait for a track to download, and they may not have an installed media player that supports the audio format. Playback therefore relies on jPlayer, an open source HTML5 audio/video library which intelligently falls back to Adobe Flash when necessary to provide a consistent interface in all browsers.

“We are thrilled with the flexible and user-friendly interface that has allowed us to make these records publicly accessible for the first time. By also adding the oral history database to the OneSearch feature on our site, researchers have the ability to find all related records, regardless of medium or format. This will be an extremely useful tool for our users.” [Arilea Sill, City Archivist]

The AABC website has re-launched with a new design in honour of Archives Week 2011 and the second anniversary of Memorybc.ca. This project was made possible through NADP funding from Heritage Canada, Library & Archives Canada, and the Canadian Council of Archives. Through an RFP process, the AABC executive selected Andornot to design the new site and migrate the current content.

As part of the mandate of the project, the design incorporates elements of the Memory BC look and feel, with the use of the same header image and colors. The AABC logo was also updated to a more modern style. The structure of the site was re-organized to group pages under 5 main headings and all the content was migrated and reformatted. Older newsletters were converted into PDF’s rather than trying to retain over 900 HTML pages and images.

Old site

New Site

Behind the scenes the site uses the open source Umbraco content management system and is hosted by Andornot. Individual members of the executive and volunteers now have rights to edit specific sections or pages, and to upload documents into a Media Library. The WYSIWYG content editor allows them to easily type in content, or to copy and paste from other programs. No knowledge of HTML is required as stylesheets control the formatting.

The home page is now automatically populated by recent entries from a news blog with an RSS feed. The same approach has been used for positions listed on the Job Board. Umbraco offers a Publish /Unpublish date feature so jobs can automatically be set to disappear after the closing date.

Redesigning and migrating a site with so much content created over many years presented some challenges, and we are very grateful for the responsiveness of the AABC executive to our suggestions and recommendations.

“Our site needed updating for many years. The new site is much more user-friendly and is very easy to edit. Information is easier to find for our members and users, and will allow more control and diverse functionality for the AABC executive and contractors. We really like our new logo and how much the overall look and feel matches MemoryBC.ca. Andornot’s knowledge of the BC archival community helped to make this project run smoothly.” Jane Morrison, AABC President.

VANCOUVER, BC, and WOBURN, Mass.--SydneyPLUS and Inmagic, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Inmagic’s special library business by SydneyPLUS. The Inmagic special library business includes Inmagic’s DB/Text® Library Suite of products: DB/TextWorks®, DB/Text®WebPublisher Pro, and Inmagic®Genie.

The move will strengthen both SydneyPLUS and the new Inmagic division by bringing together complementary technologies to meet the needs of special librarians, while allowing Inmagic, Inc. to focus on new markets.

Andornot’s status as an Inmagic reseller/partner will be re-assigned to the new entity and from our client’s perspective, it should be business as usual. We are excited at the potential for future developments of the software and are looking forward to this new relationship. Inmagic are hosting customer briefing webcasts tomorrow and Thursday - contact Inmagic if you did not receive their announcement with details of how to register.

Denise, Kathy and Peter are delighted to welcome Jonathan Jacobsen as a new partner in Andornot Consulting. Since completing an MLIS at UBC’s library school in 1997, Jonathan has worked for two library systems vendors and an ecommerce application developer.

Jonathan joined Andornot as a consultant in 2008, and has enjoyed the tremendous variety of projects that Andornot undertakes, and the diversity of clients we serve. He has been instrumental in spearheading our VuFind initiative, and brings a wealth of marketing as well as technical experience.

Jonathan particularly enjoys teaching, training, and helping people to select the right tools and make the best use of technology in their own work and lives. When not parenting and working, Jonathan can usually be found out running, hiking, kayaking or otherwise enjoying a day in the woods, on the ocean or in the mountains.

With our core group of four partners, plus our colleagues Ted and Sue, Andornot is well positioned to continue providing new ideas and practical solutions to clients.